How can I test a new nameserver before updating the registrar records?

Question

I have configured a set of DNS records at a new DNS provider. The configuration is complex, with load-balancing, SSL, etc, there are things that could go wrong.

I want to test this configuration before changing the namespace records at registrar.

• Is there any way to locally provide my machine with the new nameserver for the domain?
• Are there any tools that might help with this?

Please note: I don't want to just update the A records (e.g. in /etc/hosts) - I want to specifically check the nameserver is returning the A and CNAME records.

Ustulation

Answer 1

If you're on a *nix system, you should be able to use either nslookup or dig. With both of those commands you can specify what server you would like to query. Simply use your new nameserver as the server. With dig, the query would look something like

dig @<your-nameserver> <hostname-to-look-up>

So, if you wanted to query google's public dns server and ask it about the address www.google.com, you'd use

dig @8.8.8.8 www.google.com

which, amongst other things, would tell you that www.google.com is an alias for www.l.google.com -- and then would give you a bunch of IP address (A records) for that name.

Christopher

Brilliant, thanks. Could you maybe update your answer with the correct command with dig (dig @ns1.google.com www.google.com). Thanks. – Ustulation

@Ustulation 8.8.8.8 is a valid DNS server. The answer is right. – Demount

@Demount Yeah. He hadn't got that there when I commented :) (stackoverflow.com/posts/10854369/revisions) – Ustulation

Windows dig?? – Riffe

@Petah, simply, idk. The only Windows box I have access to right now (Win7) seems to not have it, not have it installed, or not have it in PATH: 'dig' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file. – Christopher

@Riffe for Windows use nslookup as in nslookup <hostname-to-look-up> <your-nameserver> You can get more verbose information by using the debug flag as in nslookup -debug google.com 8.8.8.8 – Empyema

Answer 2

For both Windows and my remote Linux(CentOS) servers I use nslookup tool which works on both platforms:

nslookup new-sub.domain.com 8.8.8.8
// and for more details:
nslookup -debug new-sub.domain.com 8.8.8.8

Summons